He is by no means a Social Media Purist, but still he teaches what he considers the "right way" to interact on Twitter & other Social Media platforms (hint: it ain't by spamming people your offers). Harris has a number of years of success in the internet marketing realm and I feel very honored to have him as a guest author today.

With that ... here's Harris' blog post entitled "The Easy Way to Get Targeted Twitter Followers":

Maybe you're like I was just a few months ago, thinking:

"Twitter is short for Time Waster"

or

"Twitter is just not a business tool"

or

"I joined Twitter and I just don't get it"

I've introduced a number of people to Twitter and I hear things like this all the time. Especially the last statement. Typically what happens is someone will join up, invite some of their friends, and then lo and behold, sit there and wait around for something to happen. Although the founders of Twitter claim that it's just a micro-blogging tool, it really has become a rapidly growing , if somewhat rudimentary, social network.

Like I said in my last blog post on the subject, there's a right way and a wrong way to go about attacking Twitter for your own purposes. If you're jumping into Twitter and looking at it primarily as a way to make money, you'll fail miserably and you'll fail quickly.

Allow me to remind you of my rules for "right" Twittering:

1. First get a good network of followers going.2. Build relationships with your network.3. Get your followers to click on your links & tell others about you by retweeting your messages4. Then, and only then, consider how you might monetize the network.

I actually recommend that you don't even bother thinking about making any money with your twitter contacts until you've got at least 5000 followers. I know what you're thinking. HANG ON THERE! 5000 followers? How am I gonna get 5000 followers? The answer is quite simple, my friends.

Follow other people first.

It's based on the law of reciprocity: you follow someone, they follow you back. It's really the 'way of the world' on Twitter and it works far better than any one of the other systems out there. Some of those other ideas for getting followers can work, but truthfully, at the core "follow others and they'll follow back" is the best system out there. You're in control of who you're following & thus what 'target audience' you're hitting as well.

Depending on what niche or business you happen to be in you can expect somewhere between 20 to 50% of those people to follow you back.

Wait a second, Harris... What's this "business or niche" part?

Let me explain:

One of the coolest aspects of Twitter is that you can really focus down and TARGET people who are interested in what you have to say. I first recommend that you create a good profile and decent background for your account that really shows off your personality and main interests. Make it, what I call, "Follow Friendly" so that when you follow people, they see your Twitter account, the right people will want to follow you back. (The 'right people' being people that are also interested in what your key interests or business is all about.)

I'll finish up this post by letting you in on some some great services that will help you find people who are in your niche and share your personal interests. Be sure to check out MrTweet.com, WeFollow.com, and Twibes.com. All you have to do at these sites is type in your keyword and find people in your industry or niche. What you'll want to do here is find people on Twitter in your area of interest with (generally) between 2,000 and 100,000 followers. And then what you want to do is ... not only follow them, but FOLLOW THEIR FOLLOWERS, TOO. Twitter allows you to follow up to 1000 per day - I recommend more like 300-500 per day.

And don't think you have to do it all yourself - you can hire a virtual assistant to do it for you for a few hundred bucks a month or get a software tool that does this as well. And believe me, there's plenty of tools out there! I've personally tested out a large number of these "follow tools" and the one I recommend is called "Twit FriendAdder". It's only $50 and does everything (and more) than software I've seen at 4 times the price.

website

Of course it doesn't stop there. There's a lot more to all of this than just following people (like creating avatars, building relationships, & making money!). And, as you can expect, this is all covered in my Social Media Income System entitled "Coup De Twitter". There's a free likes video for you there with no sign-up required to watch.

Lastly, if you have any questions for me, you can find me on Twitter - my ID there is @harrisfellman - I look forward to hearing from you.